Tag: ex girlfriend

My friend comes to me and says, “Here we go again,” he exerts frustratingly, “My girlfriend keeps talking about her ex.” If you’ve been in a serious long-term relationship, and are meeting someone who has also, you might find yourself proclaiming, “My partner’s ex keeps coming up.”

Even though fashion magazines and tabloids proclaim that talking about one’s ex is one of many red flags, more often than not, this is not as bad as it looks on the surface. It could be good therapy. Maybe your partner is just working out the details of that past relationship so that he or she can move on healthfully with you.

Your partner’s talking about his or her ex cannot just be either disregarded or seen as a threat to your new potential relationship. If you are prone to jealousy, then you might jump to the red flag conspiracy theory, otherwise it’s good to keep an open mind to see if you can assist your partner in unloading a little sensitive psychological baggage as you prepare for your potential journey together.

Sometimes all your partner needs to do is to release some of the pent-up psychological pressure from his or her past relationship. If this is the case, you can feel good about your partner trusting you with this sensitive data.

A sociopath, on the other hand, will use the talking-about-your-ex method of keeping you off-kilter and if you’re not joining-in the ex-bashing or ex-edification, then he or she might ask you about your ex to get you to participate. Then, later, when you express your concerns about him or her talking about their ex all the time, they’ll point out that you talk about your ex all the time, too. (In the mind of the sociopath, it doesn’t matter whether they asked you about it, or not. It’s just one of their clever tactics of pre-disarmament.)

Whether or not your partner has good or bad intentions, by all means, speak up and tell him or her how you feel about talking about his or her ex. Your partner is not a mind reader and might be assuming that you are as concerned about his or her resolving any issues from past relationships to have greater potential with you.

You will never know, unless you have this conversation. (Even then, there’s a 10 percent chance that it will be a clever manipulation, and there’s no way to know for certain, until later.)

It’s best to be open, and not made jealous or offended easily. Seek first to understand, then empathetically try to put yourself in his or her shoes. How would you feel?

Healthy relationships are all about being open and honest, give-and-take, and maintaining a healthy balance. If you’re jumping to emotional judgment, or looking for red flags in an effort to defend yourself, maybe it’s time for a little self-examination.

If your partner is pushing your buttons, that is to say, he or she is doing something that makes you upset or rubs you the wrong way, it is highly likely that its not your partner who is at fault. He or she is just awakening a weakness by way of activating a trigger which is activating an emotional wound from your past.

Instead of accusing your partner of something, be open and honest by telling him or her how this makes you feel, then, if you are wise, you look within and ask yourself, “Why?” There’s a good chance you will find something hiding deep inside you protesting too much because of a wound from the past.

In my friend’s case, he had been in a relationship with a woman who left him to return to her ex. This wound was activated when his new girlfriend talked about her ex. He was triggered, and thought, “Here we go again,” because it seemed similar to his past experience, which had not turned out the way he would have liked.

All relationships are different, and just because something is similar, does not mean it’s the same thing.

In the end, it’s up to you. You have to decide whether you can live in a relationship where your partner’s ex keeps coming up, whether it’s comparing you, complaining, or uplifting. Whether you can negotiate a compromise, or resolve the conflict between each other, or within yourself.

It happens… We get all enamored and create a connection with someone who has something else in mind and they announce the time has come for them to go (or they just disappear into the darkness) and you just can’t believe, “I just got dumped!”

Understandably, when someone you cared about deeply suddenly exits your life it is painful and may be complicated by the degree of surprise which might come into play if you didn’t see it coming.

Some other issues that might come into play may be due to the guilt which might be felt by the exiting partner. If there exists a high degree of guilt at play, there might be a flood of false accusations hurled toward you to justify the departure of the exiting partner. Just remember, if you are blamed for their leaving you, these accusations are highly over-exaggerated in an effort to make him or her feel better about bailing out on you.

Try not to take it personally (when little else could be more personal) when they try to blame you for everything they can possibly think of to make you look and feel as bad as they can possibly make you feel.

The good news is, this person just bailed out on you.

Now you know what kind of person this really was. You probably had no idea that he or she was the kind of person who would just walk out on you and leave you holding the bag, like that. Now you know.

Thank God, you know now, and are not finding out much later, when the stakes could have been much higher.

It’s not much consolation at the beginning of the separation when your feelings are running amok due to the fierce rejection and sense of betrayal which may be overwhelming in the moment.

Keep in mind that you are the best person you know. You know this because you would have never done this to him or her. You loved and trusted, got stabbed in the back, and discarded like yesterday’s trash. You are a loving, special, and adorable person and just because someone doesn’t want you, it doesn’t mean you’re any less the person that you know you are.

Obviously, he or she was not good enough for you. You deserve only your highest and best in a mate, someone who will love, care and cherish you just as much (if not more, which would be crazy) as you do. The best love is reciprocal.

You can enthusiastically be grateful for the opportunity to find your highest and best in a mate, your soul mate. Someone who is perfectly matched for your best life which is waiting for you. This soul mate will not be perfect, for none of us are, but this person will be perfect for you, even including his or her imperfections.

This perfect matching calls in the sacred opportunity to grow and expand together without causing each other harm. Instead, you hold each other up, celebrating everything about each other as heart-to-heart and hand-in-hand you traverse the various road conditions encountered along the journey of your lives both individually and together.

You’ve loved, you’ve lost, the sacredness of your love disregarded, broken trust, betrayal and the lover that left you has returned.

When your ex- comes knockin’ do you send him a-walkin’?

What do you do?

First off, you must wrap your head around the idea that if your former lover left you, he or she will likely do it again. Statistically, this is the bottom line.

If 9 out of 10 exiting exes tend to exit again, do you think yours is the 1 out of 10 who will return to stay?

Only if you believe he or she is “the one” (out of ten) then you need to saddle-up and get ready to give it another go, else-wise he or she gets the ole heave-ho.

Identify if you and/or your partner, are serial breakers. Some people actually attract the on again/off again relationship style and have an odd affection for all the drama that comes with it. If you and your partner are both okay with that, there is no need to read on.

There is a tendency to entertain the impossible romance for a variety of reasons, maybe you only remember the good times, being with someone familiar is better than starting over, after the breakup your self-esteem may have been sinking or you would rather be with someone than to be alone.

These are only some of the unhealthy reasons you might be compelled to allow someone into your life who is likely to disappoint, leave you and break your heart again.

There are also healthy reasons that you might consider reconciliation, like truly having an intimate and loving relationship (that goes both ways), maybe the breakup was due to circumstances beyond your control and were not directly connected to your romance and/or sharing children and working together for the common good, amongst others.

If you’re to have any hope of a successful reconciliation the one who left should be remorseful upon re-entry. He or she must be willing and able to recount their departure, explain why they left and genuinely regret their decision to leave. You should be able to “feel” their regret and they should cite some reasons that they believe that he or she would not walk out on you again.

To be certain that you have your wits about you, you should be able to have the answers to some basic questions before you reconcile:

Can you learn to trust him or her again?

Does he or she have a history of bailing out on previous relationships?

Did the break-up happen due to a lack of love in the relationship?

What does the returning ex-lover expect to gain from reconciliation?

Don’t second-guess yourself. Most jilted lovers will turn their attention inward, asking themselves, “What did I do wrong?” even escalating toward levels of self-abuse. Stop it. You didn’t bail on the relationship.

Don’t fall for the old, “What’s in the past is in the past. Let’s just forget it all and start over.”

As you move forward it may be wise to consider enlisting the aid of a therapist or relationship coach to help increase open communication, evaluating issues that may have contributed to the break-up and resolving those issues.

Both parties must review the past, determine what can be changed also be willing and able to make the changes necessary to increase the odds of maintaining and sustaining a long-term romantic relationship.

If you are unable to resolve your differences, there is the likelihood that there is another breakup looming in your future as you wait for the bomb to drop.

When someone returns, who has turned their back on you previously, it could be an opportunity for you to grow and expand in your own self-confidence and consciousness. A firm, “thanks, but no thanks,” may be an appropriate response validating your desire only to surround yourself with people and circumstances that support you, your highest and best life from this point forward.